


high as the flames will rise

by Lise



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alqualondë, Angst, Brother Feels, First Kinslaying, Gen, Introspection, Siblings, mostly just some melancholy fic about the aftermath of the First Kinslaying, well this has been fun
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-07 07:26:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11618814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: The quiet after the world ends.





	high as the flames will rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jubah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jubah/gifts).



> A long while ago [crocordile](http://crocordile.tumblr.com) prompted me to write some Silmarillion whump. The prompt sat in my inbox for a while, and then I started writing it, stopped, and months later rediscovered [my old Celegorm fanmix](http://veliseraptor.tumblr.com/post/162334253870/never-tie-me-down-a-celegorm-fanmix-spotify) and suddenly had inspiration. This is what came out of it. Every so often I poke my head back into this fandom, and it's usually because of these two. 
> 
> The title of this fic comes from the song Cinder and Smoke by Iron and Wine.
>
>> _Give me your hand_  
>  _And take what you will tonight, I'll give it as fast_  
>  _And high as the flame will rise_  
>  _Cinder and smoke_  
>  _Some whispers around the trees_  
>  _The juniper bends  
> _ _As if you were listening  
> _

Curufin found his brother knee-deep in sea water. A body was floating face down in the water a few feet in front of him, rising and falling slowly with the waves.

“One of ours?” He asked, keeping his feet out of reach of the water. Celegorm might not be troubled by having his boots full of water, but he did not relish the thought.

Such mundane things to think, at a time like this. With the world tilted on its axis and all things changed forever.

“I do not know,” Celegorm said slowly. “I haven’t looked.” He scrubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Curufin said, which was mostly true. There was a graze on his leg that stung, but it was far from serious. “Are you?”

“Some.” His brother turned, finally, to show a slash on his upper arm that looked to have gone deep. Curufin gave him a sharp look and Celegorm bared his teeth in something that was probably supposed to have been a smile. “I’ve taken worse boar hunting.” A moment later he seemed to realize what he’d said, and he swayed, a flash of nausea crossing his face.

“Let me see to it,” Curufin said. “Where is that hound of yours?”

Celegorm shook his head slowly. “Not certain. He…left, when it was over.” He swallowed. “He’ll come back.”

Curufin made a noncommittal noise. He wondered if the dog would stay with Celegorm. It was the Valar’s creature, nose to tail, and the Valar did not think much of the House of Feanor. “Come, brother. Your wound needs tending.”  _And so do you_ , Curufin thought. Or at least he suspected as much. There was a bleak look on his face that threatened to become worse.

Almost all were wary of Celegorm’s temper, and with good reason, but many of his other moods were as swift and intense, and there was a softness within his hunter’s heart. Celegorm could come home slathered in blood and grinning from hunting and the next day carrying a motherless fawn he insisted on tending.

_And you are unaffected?_

_I have to be,_ Curufin thought coldly.  _What is begun is begun, and we will finish it._

Celegorm had not moved. Curufin opened his mouth to repeat his words, but then Celegorm splashed forward, wading deeper until he could reach the corpse’s arm and pull it in, towing it back to shore. He lifted it and trudged up out of reach of the waves before laying it down, face up. It was one of the Teleri, perhaps a little younger than Curufin himself. They both stared down at him.

“Idiot,” Celegorm said, shaking his head. There was a faint trace of anger in his voice, but Curufin was not entirely sure that it was directed at the Telerin. “Why? Why do this?”

“Maybe he could tell you,” Curufin said. “I cannot.” He thought he could, after a fashion. The Teleri loved their ships as the work of their hands. They would as soon surrender them as his father would surrender the Silmarils. But he did not like knowing it, and thought perhaps it would be better to spare his brother the knowing.

It did not mean it had not been folly. But perhaps there had been no other path.

Celegorm turned his back. “Which way?” He asked. Curufin glanced at his freely bleeding arm and exhaled through his nose.

“You haven’t even bound it up?” Celegorm looked at him blankly as though he were speaking some other language, and Curufin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Of course not. This way.” He took his brother by the arm and towed him after. He considered taking him directly to their father, but decided it would be better to wait until Celegorm was a bit more composed and no longer bleeding.

He hauled his unresisting brother into one of the hastily erected tents, scarcely looking at the Elf currently occupying it. “Out,” he said harshly, and they took one look at his face and went. The moment the tent was empty Curufin wished he had asked if there were materials for seeing to wounds here. He moved to run his fingers through his hair and realized that there was blood on his hand.

No way of knowing if it was Celegorm’s or someone else’s.

He looked back at his brother, who was frowning at him. “You look troubled.”

Curufin did not try to smile. “It  _has_ been a long day.” He wondered what they would say of it in the future. He doubted it would be kind.  _It doesn’t need to be kind. We do what we must._ The thought was weary, and hard.

Celegorm laughed, a grim and bitter sound. “I suppose it has, at that.” He paused. “Where are the others?”

“Not far.” And scattered. Maedhros and Maglor had their heads bent together, talking in low voices. Caranthir sat with Amras, Amrod standing away with a blank look on his face. Of his father Curufin had seen nothing.

This was proof, he thought, that Morgoth’s influence had sunk deep. Proof of the necessity of their quest, as if their grandfather’s murder was not enough.

“Sit down,” he told Celegorm. “You look unsteady.”

“I feel it,” he said, sinking down to the ground. “Do you not? As if Arda itself shifts under your feet. Things gone…strange.”

“I feel it,” Curufin said. “Morgoth’s doing.”

“Yes,” Celegorm said after a moment. “Morgoth’s doing.” He swallowed hard. There was nothing to stitch the wound closed with. Curufin ripped a strip of cloth off his sleeve instead, crouching down next to him and binding up the gash on his brother’s arm. He’d done this before, he told himself. Just like this.

“Who did this,” he heard himself ask, and then wanted to shake himself.

Celegorm shook his head slowly. “I didn’t see. I wasn’t…it all blurred together.”

Curufin almost envied him that. The battle was etched in his memory, every detail mercilessly clear. One boy, barely more than a child, and Curufin had cut him down before realizing that what he had taken for a sword was in fact an oar.

He kept his hands steady. “It doesn’t matter. They were fools.”  _As though idiocy were a crime punishable by death._ “They gave us no choice.”

But he felt it. Everything had changed, here. A shift that had begun with the destruction of the Two Trees and ended here - no, not ended. Began here. With what might or might not be his brother’s blood on his hands.

Celegorm was staring blankly into the distance. “Look at me,” Curufin said, and Celegorm turned his head slowly. “We did what we had to do. We cannot turn back and leave our grandfather unavenged and our father’s masterwork, the pieces of his  _soul,_ in the hands of that -  _creature._ ”

“No going back,” Celegorm said, meeting his eyes, and something hardened in them, resolving. “Only forward.”

Curufin dipped his chin. “Always.” He slid his hand down and squeezed Celegorm’s forearm. “We are our father’s sons.”

“Aren’t we just,” Celegorm said, his voice touched with an irony that made Curufin frown, but a moment later he flexed his arm and stood. Curufin heard a rustle at the tent’s entrance and turned toward it to see a grey muzzle poking through, followed by the rest of the enormous hound, his dark and liquid eyes seeming to linger on Curufin before padding to his master. Celegorm reached out, tangling his fingers into the dog’s ruff.

“Huan,” he said, face relaxing in naked relief that belied his seeming certainty about the hound’s return. He slid his arms around the dog’s neck and pressed his face briefly into his shoulder.

There was blood on its muzzle, Curufin noticed. He wondered whose.

Celegorm breathed deeply and then straightened, though his hand remained on the hound’s back. “We should go,” he said. And smiled crookedly. “Forward, yes?”

“Forward,” Curufin agreed.

There wasn’t anywhere else to go.


End file.
